A recent phenomenon in competition policy is the acquisition of a private firm by an enterprise that is either wholly owned by government or in the midst of privatization. Such an acquisition poses the question of how public ownership may alter the incentives of a firm to engage in...

Extant studies treat the impact of entry on concentration and market structure mechanically; with some going further to naively identify fall in concentration as the cause of competition. It is the intention of this paper to critically examine these contentions by studying trends and...

State regulation of insurance companies has been criticized for many years because of the burden imposed on insurers by having to comply with the laws of many jurisdictions. These higher costs are passed on to consumers. The problems with the current regulatory structure are prompting calls for...

Financial crises worldwide have been a feature of the past two decades, and particularly in the period 1997-98 in a number of hitherto very successful Asian countries. The paper describes the part being played by financial supervisors, especially through their international groupings - Basel,...

In November 1991, federal lawmakers threatened to place a binding cap on credit card interest rates. I find that credit card rates declined following the regulatory threat, more so for larger and more politically visible credit card issuers. A set of stock market event studies reveals that...

This paper shows that bank performance improves significantly after restrictions on bank expansion are lifted. We find that operating costs and loan losses decrease sharply after states permit statewide branching and, to a lesser extent, after states allow interstate banking. The improvements...

Satellite radio competitors XM and Sirius recently announced their intention to merge their companies in a $13 billion deal. Recent financial statements show this merger is necessary. Although both stocks grew steadily through October of 2004, they hit a plateau after that and then began a...

This paper proposes a general framework to assist policymakers in framing the key issues and objectively weighing the relevant evidence and policy considerations for the purpose of determining whether to create, modify, or eliminate any statutory immunity to the federal antitrust laws. The...

Understanding the impact of changes in regulation on market risk is crucial but there is no literature giving clear evidence that market risk responds to expected changes in regulation designed to change risk (mostly because of a dearth of cases where the risk effect is isolated). This paper...

We investigate the impact of creating Independent System Operators (ISOs) to independently manage regional electricity transmission resources and institute regional electricity exchange markets. Our analysis examines how the formation of the PJM Independent System Operator (ISO) in Pennsylvania,...